


the things that fate had willed

by armyofbees



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Infidelity, M/M, Pining, Possessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, liberal use of frank sinatra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22427671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armyofbees/pseuds/armyofbees
Summary: Eugene wishes he were surprised when Sidney says it. He wishes he could crow happily for his friend’s future, or even just sit there, shocked silent as Sid slips further and further from him with every passing moment. He wishes — but he’d known. It was in the way he’d met Eugene at the station, subdued, somehow so different from the acute physicality they’d both felt on Pavuvu.He’d known before he even got in the car: something about Sid had changed.
Relationships: Sidney "Sid" Phillips/Eugene Sledge
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	the things that fate had willed

**Author's Note:**

> there is a drought of sidgene in this fandom! a tragic drought! i was reading one of the 12 works in the tag the other day when i was struck with inspiration and immediately decided to spit this out in the span of, like, 13 hours, which never happens for me. i really just wanted to explore what they'd be like together after the war because every ship deserves a postwar fic and THEY DON'T HAVE ONE. so here.
> 
> also, mary 100% gets the short end of the stick in this fic so please appreciate her and i'm sorry i did her like this.
> 
> title is from [Oh! What It Seemed To Be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SarZSPn5WhI) by Frank Sinatra, which makes me feel a lot of sidgene feelings.
> 
> as always, i am writing only about the characters as they appear in The Pacific and mean no disrespect toward the actual veterans.
> 
> enjoy!

Eugene wishes he were surprised when Sidney says it. He wishes he could crow happily for his friend’s future, or even just sit there, shocked silent as Sid slips further and further from him with every passing moment. He wishes — but he knew. He’d known. It was in the way he’d met Eugene at the station, somehow subdued, somehow so different from the acute physicality they’d both felt on Pavuvu.

He’d known before he even got in the car: something about Sid had changed. Or, really, something about Sid-and-Eugene had changed.

Sid had been the one to start everything. It only follows that he would be the one to end it, though Eugene wishes he had a little more warning. He wishes he’d had time to adjust, gotten home and gotten over the war and then dealt with everything else that couldn’t last forever. But maybe doing everything at once really was the only way to do it at all.

When they were fifteen, Sid realizing how he could feel about girls and Eugene realizing he’d never thought about girls at all, and both of them too nervously juvenile to make mention of either fact, they began spending their days together. They had, of course, been friends since childhood, forced together at first by parental ties and later drawn together by choice. But it wasn’t until high school and the bright blush of boyhood that they shifted into something else altogether.

Alabama was warm all year, the chills of winter just barely nipping through the thick wool of their school uniforms. On weekdays, when school let out in the early afternoon and the cold breeze chased most of their class home right after the final bell, Sid would cast one look at Eugene and they’d find themselves in the fields back behind the Sledge estate, walking bikes or Deacon or just their own comfortable conversation.

“There’s nothin’ to do inside,” Sid would insist if Eugene protested. “You’ll get warm if you keep moving.” They were only ever token objections, anyway. Eugene would never have passed up these hours with him.

So they would run, and if the ground was hard and mudless, Sid would throw him down onto the grass and wrestle. Sid was good at it, and Eugene was learning. He knew that if his father knew he’d have a conniption, Eugene’s heart condition an ever pressing concern on his parents’ minds. They worried whenever he was away from the house, even if they knew Sid was with him the whole time. But the fear of disappointing his parents paled in comparison to the feeling that bottomed out his stomach whenever Sid pinned him to the ground by his arms or his hips, and Eugene sometimes thought he’d like to never go home again if it meant he could stay right where he was, right there.

It was in these moments, Sid sitting high above him, laughing or talking or egging him on as Eugene reached for his shoulders to push him off, that Eugene began to know. He couldn’t read Sid, didn’t think Sid really knew if the way he sometimes awkwardly tried to bring up Mary Houston was any indication, but Eugene could feel the idea forming obscurely inside himself.

And then all at once, Sid knew too. Eugene won for once. It didn’t happen so often, but he could sometimes wriggle out from Sid’s grasp before he was trapped, and sometimes he could flip Sid if he got a good enough grasp on his shoulders. That afternoon, Eugene saw the sweeping kick coming and dodged, dragging Sid down to the ground on the follow-through, pinning him with one knee jutting into his stomach and the other resting on the ground alongside his hip. His hands landed on Sid’s chest, Eugene momentarily forgetting to hold his arms still as the image of his best friend laid out flushed and breathless before him came fully to fruition.

Sid stared up at him and, slow and warm as molasses, went soft in Eugene’s grip. Sid reached up, too quick in the honey-drenched moment, looking as though he was going to flip Eugene like this were any other day, as though he was going to put this heart-pounding break in convention behind them like so many spare seconds. And then he took hold of Eugene’s shoulders, gentle and firm, and pulled him down until Eugene couldn’t do anything but close his eyes and feel Sid’s lips on his.

Their bodies were flat against one another, and when Eugene skimmed his fingers over the firm plane of Sid’s ribcage, he could feel his best friend’s heart beating with all the crashing urgency of a hummingbird’s wings.

Sid broke away to pant against his mouth, and Eugene had the presence of mind to move his knee from Sid’s sternum to the semi-frozen ground, drinking in the warmth of his heavy breath and his body. They stayed there for a moment, close. Eugene closed his eyes, concentrated on calming the fluttering sensation in his lungs. It tasted like panic in the back of his throat, and more than anything he wanted it gone. More than anything he wanted Sid to kiss him again.

“Hey,” Sid said, and it came out as a hoarse whisper. Eugene opened his eyes to Sid’s broad smile, hesitant even in its openness. “Hey.” It was like he hadn’t got any other words.

Eugene found that he couldn’t think of any either, and he kissed Sid for the lack. This one was more, somehow, and Eugene’s hands came up to cup Sid’s cheeks like he’d seen in so many movies. His skin was pliant under Eugene’s fingers, his jaw a gentle curve, and he felt _good._ It was almost overwhelming until Sid gently pried his hands away from his face, pushing him back to make space.

“Eugene,” he said, “Gene, wait.”

And here it came, the fear creeping in for both of them. “Sid, please,” Eugene said, bracing himself. It was a stone in his chest.

“No,” said Sid. “It’s fine.” He let one hand rest at the nape of Eugene’s neck, reassuring. “It’s fine. Just be sure.”

Eugene had never been more sure of anything in his entire life than he was at that moment.

Now here he is, Sidney Phillips in all his handsome, charming glory, in the suit Eugene wants to believe is for his benefit but knows isn’t, saying reverently, “She’s marryin’ me,” like they don’t know each other in such a strange, irreparable way.

Eugene says, “Oh.” Because even though he saw it coming it still hits him like a blow to the gut. He’s quiet for a moment, and he can tell from the change in Sid’s face that it’s too long, too somber. “Good for you, Sid,” he tries, but it doesn’t land quite right and both of them can tell.

There’s a thick silence, so awkward that Eugene begins fiddling with his pipe again despite the fact that nothing in their conversation suggests he could get away with a smoke right now. Sid keeps looking at him instead of the road and Eugene stares resolutely out the windshield, turning his pipe around and around. The burning in his chest is crawling up his throat.

They reach the head of the Sledges’ long driveway and Sid throws the car into park with prejudice. Both of them are quiet, dampened with frustration. Eugene makes to stand, desperate to escape the suffocating nothing that Sid has greeted him with.

“Eugene, look, I’m sorry,” says Sid, stopping him. “It was never going to be — you know. We weren’t. You weren’t here and we never promised each other anything.”

“No,” Eugene agrees. Everything has caught up with him at once, the past and present clashing, ugly, in his mind. He feels faint, his heart clipping double-time. He gets out of the car, breathing in fresh air at last. It doesn’t help the tightness in his lungs. He throws Sid a smile shaded with regret. “We never did. And I wasn’t.” He slams the door, which he thinks probably gives him away, so he pats the frame of the car, placating. “I’m happy for you, Sid. Congratulations.”

Sid looks for a second like he’s going to call Eugene on his bullshit, but instead he says, “Eugene, I want you to be happy. Not just for me, but… Look, get yourself squared away and then we can figure it all out.” He sounds hopeful, and despite himself, Eugene feels it too. It’s foolish and nostalgic, and he’ll never be the same as he was, but he thinks Sid probably won’t either, and maybe it can work for them.

Sid says, “The OOM’s soon. Come on by all dressed up and there won’t be a dame in the joint who’ll be able to resist you. We’ll figure it all out.”

And Eugene opens the back door of Sid’s sedan, grabs his duffel, and slams it. He takes a couple steps back, starts to reply, and stops. He realizes he has nothing. No words could encompass what he’s feeling right now, this deep-seated dread prying his ribs apart and letting his chest implode on itself. He feels, and it’s stupid to say this now that he’s made it out of the war untouched, like he’s been shot.

He can’t say anything, so he doesn’t. He nods to Sid, maybe an agreement, and starts up the driveway in silence. He feels trapped between the house in the distance and Sid in the car behind him, unmoving. Eugene wonders if he’s waiting for him to look back, to give him something better than that, but then there’s the sound of tires on gravel and Eugene realizes that he’s alone.

The stupid thing is, it had all been perfect up until then. Sid had changed but Eugene had too, and they still fit together the same way they always had. Sid’s hand on his arm was a greeting, familiar and warm and promising. Eugene had thought, Once we’re alone. Once we’re alone he’ll tell me what’s on his mind and maybe I’ll even tell him what’s on mine. Once we’re alone I’ll say I missed you so Goddamn much and make all my confessions and it’ll be like it always was.

Sid was smiling like a fucking fool and Eugene was too, knowing that coming home wouldn’t immediately fix everything but that seeing Sid standing there was a damn good start. Eugene had been imagining Sid’s lips on his before he could even open his mouth.

He thinks of waking up on the train. He thinks of everything before. Seeing Burgie off had been bittersweet, but he knew they’d keep in touch. He’d smiled, wider than he ever had on the islands. He was convinced he was among friends. When he woke up an hour or so outside of Mobile, Eugene had almost thought he’d missed his stop. Then he thought, Snafu would’ve woken me. And then, in that moment between drowsing and waking, he realized he was alone. No warning and no goodbye, Snafu vanishing into the night like he’d never even been there in the first place. Seeing Sid after that was enough to make Eugene wonder if everything he’d been through with Snafu hadn’t been an elaborate dream.

By the time he walks into his parents’ foyer unannounced, a habit it will take a long time for him to break, Eugene’s almost convinced himself that neither Sid nor Snafu ever existed at all.

* * *

He dreams in fits and starts at first, and then it opens out into a wide expanse of awful, unending time. It gets to the point where he dreads nighttime, where he hates changing out of day clothes, where he sleeps in his shirt just to try and get rid of the dreams. The sun sets fear on his shoulders as it sinks beneath the horizon.

As boys, Sid and Eugene had gotten into the habit of sneaking out. By their junior year of high school, weekends would find them back in their field, sometimes with booze pilfered from their parents’ outrageous cellars, lying hand in hand and watching the stars like lovers.

It was never discussed, and Eugene spent a few nights lying in the grass alone when Sid couldn’t manage to get away or didn’t think that he would be there, but they were close enough that if one couldn’t sleep, the other was almost always quick to follow.

It was on one of those nights that Eugene said, “I’m gonna enlist.”

“Me too,” Sid agreed, and Eugene could tell that wasn’t only because he just said it. Sid had been thinking about this as much as he had. There was a brief silence, and then Sid said, “You can’t, though, can you?”

Eugene paused. Of course, Sid was right. His father would never let him unless his heart miraculously got better, and there wasn’t anything Eugene could do in the short term to fix that. “I can sure as hell try,” he said stubbornly.

There was another pause, and this time Sid reached out to clasp Eugene’s hand. “Come with me when I go. We don’t have to tell him.”

It made Eugene smile. He didn’t imagine his father was lying to him, didn’t imagine the recruiters would gloss over anything his father regarded so seriously, but in that moment it was about Sid. Eugene would go with him anywhere. “All right.”

He was rejected that time, and when his father found out, he was furious in the quiet way of the Sledges. It was as though he was more angry that Eugene didn’t trust him to deliver a proper diagnosis than that he’d gone behind his parents’ back, but the underlying current of genuine concern was sobering. Eugene didn’t try it again, thinking always of the terror in his father’s eyes the afternoon after he got back from the recruitment office.

Sid was enlisted, and when he told Eugene, Eugene felt a pang of envy that he would remember on Okinawa, the first time he saw citizens in a combat zone, and he would be abruptly sick all over Snafu’s shoes.

He gives up on sleep one night and leaves. The moment he stepped foot in his room he felt anxiety trickling down his spine, its cold fingernails leaving angry red marks all over his arms. He knows he won’t be able to sleep, but he tries anyway. After an hour of staring blankly at the wall and willing himself back to consciousness every time he starts to drift off, he can admit that he’s working against himself.

He finds himself in the field. There’s hazy cloud cover that night but the stars are still dimly visible, and he sits down atop a grassy knoll and smokes. He packs his pipes, lights it, and feels the acrid burn in his chest calm him like cool water.

He thinks about the war, but that’s exhausting, so he forces himself to think of something else. He looks at the grass, tall and spry all around him, and remembers Sid holding him for the last time here, right before he shipped out. It’s still exhausting, but at least he doesn’t feel hunted anymore.

In the week that he’s been back, he and Sid haven’t seen much of one another. Eugene’s spent most of it at home, slowly unpacking, watching his dress blues watching him from the closet, getting up to close the door and opening it again when his room feels too small. Sitting beneath the oak out front to get away from it altogether.

He’s thought about Sid, thought about Mary, thought about Sid-and-Mary. The ball is tomorrow evening and he feels a subdued sort of trepidation about the whole thing. He’ll have to see them, and he knows it’s horribly uncharitable, but he would rather take a Ka-Bar to the side than watch them float across the dance floor together. Not to mention Sid’s promise the other day — Eugene doesn’t think he can handle Sid of all people introducing him to any girls, especially not if Mary’s on his arm as he does.

Eugene worries it would feel like some contrived sort of betrayal, even though Sid was really the one to do it first, and it’s nothing compared to what Eugene and Snafu got up to all those months in Peking. It occurs to him that he could leave, just board a train to New Orleans and hope he can find Snafu wandering the French Quarter. Maybe God would take pity on him and lead him right to Snafu’s door. But anyone who leaves his friend on a train with no goodbye and no address doesn’t want to be found, and Eugene can imagine him hissing, _What the hell do you think you’re doing here,_ in that scathing monotone of his. He thinks he’d rather brave the OOM ball. Besides, even if he did go, he wouldn’t be able to stay in Louisiana forever. He’ll have to face Mary Houston at some point.

Eugene falls asleep outside for the first time since he got home. It’s unnervingly familiar to be drifting off behind a hill, half-listening for the sound of gunfire in the distance. He barely dreams but he barely sleeps, either, the same way it was in the Pacific. Light bouts of rest interrupted by sudden, acute wakefulness provoked by the creaking of a branch high above his head. In every half-second between waking and sleeping, Eugene is sure he is about to die.

When he trudges home the next morning, the sun hasn’t yet peeked above the horizon. He takes up his spot in the yard chair next to the oak and waits for the rest of the house to stir. Soon they’ll be awake, his brother first, and then his mother fretting about. She’ll want him to wear his dress blues and she’ll be upset when he tells her no. The thought of putting them on draws bile up his throat, and he swallows heavily, stands, and heads in for coffee.

The OOM ball is a grand affair, and Eugene’s brother is right in that every man who served appears in uniform. It’s a sea of green and blue among the colorful costumes, women with flowers in their hair. Sid is wearing his, clean and polished and looking like he just stepped out of a war zone even though, Eugene thinks with a bout of unexpected bitterness, he had gotten home months before Eugene even saw Okinawa.

Sid is handsome and happy, glowing as he sways with Mary on the dance floor, and Eugene can’t help but watch him from his sullen corner. It’s terrible, this distance, and the more Eugene stares the angrier he feels at Sid for cursing him with this impotence. He has eyes for only one person in the room, and he couldn’t want anything else if he tried. He wishes he could want anything else.

The song shifts to a slow jazz serenade and Eugene is hit with the vivid image of Peking at night, strange music winding out of the bars and opium dens, him and Snafu and Burgie wandering the streets blotto until they’d eaten their fill of the small, sweet buns and fruits and staggered, satisfied, back to the barracks. The night when Burgie begged off early and Snafu dragged Eugene into an alley, flushed as he ever got with his off-kilter delight.

Eugene realizes his ears have grown hot and he looks down into his drink. When he looks up again, it’s like he’s entered another universe. The masks unsettle him. A woman who is a bird brushes past him, another with her face half-obscured by shapeless white twirls on the dance floor. He spots Sid in profile, beaming down at his fiancée. Mary is uncostumed save the flowers in her hair, and the sight of them among a sea of monstrous half-humans is macabre enough to set Eugene’s heart pounding. Fishing desperately for his pipe, he turns and leaves.

He’d made sure to set up near the door — map all entrances and exits, stay alert, stay ready — so he’s already smoking on the front steps past the wide driveway by the time Sid reaches him.

“I saw you makin’ a break for it,” he says, and Eugene can tell he’s trying to put the awkward homecoming behind them. “Thought you could use a punch properly spiked.”

And Eugene will humor him for now, because he appreciates the gesture and Sid does look really, really happy. “Thank you,” he says around his pipe, taking the drink and settling back against the wall.

Sid lingers on the steps just slightly above him. “Drink fast,” he says, going for levity. “If Mary catches us, she’ll have me back inside dancin’ all night.”

It falls flat, and Eugene doesn’t really know how Sid expected anything different. He stares into his punch before taking a slow drink. He doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s not something he wants to talk about anyway, so he stays silent.

Sid sips his entire glass clean before he says quietly, “Eugene?”

Eugene looks up at him, feeling unfocused. “Isn’t that what you want?”

Sid blinks. “What?”

“To dance with her.” Eugene searches his face, refusing to feel sheepish. “You looked so…” _Good,_ his mind supplies, but he doesn’t think Sid would appreciate that, not when they’re out here talking about his future wife.

Sid ducks his head. “Yeah, ’course. I didn’t mean… Not like that. C’mon, Eugene, you know that.”

“No, I don’t think I do,” Eugene says before he realizes he’s thought it. He winces. It’s harsh.

Sid heaves a sharp sigh. “Gene, I don’t know what you want me to do here. I said I’m sorry and I know that ain’t enough, that’s never gonna be enough, but we were just —” he breaks off, the silence jarring. He turns to glance at the house behind them, where music spills out of every opening and muddles conversation. They both know they’re being too loud, but Eugene thinks they’re both getting angry enough to not care. He really hadn’t meant to start a fight, but now that they’re here it feels inevitable.

“We were never gonna work forever,” Sid hisses.

It stings because Eugene knows it’s probably true, but it doesn’t stop him from retorting, “And why’s that? How’s that? Couple more years here, we finish college, nobody’d think anything of us, and then we could leave. We could’ve gone to California, Sid, God knows there are plenty of queers there!” He’s incensed. He’s too close to shouting, laying everything too bare. Sid looks like he’s been slapped in the face.

“What about your family?” he demands. “My family? What about ten years down the line when we’re livin’ in California and still bachelors and your mother starts to wonder about us? There’s no way they don’t find out.”

“Would that be so fuckin’ bad?”

In a twisted way, this feels good. This feels cathartic. Eugene gets to say everything he never thought he’d have the gall to ask for, let alone shout in Sid’s face. Being mad, getting Sid mad, and all, all of this so nakedly public. Anyone could crest the top of the stairs at any moment. Eugene wants to kiss him just to make a point.

“Yes,” Sid says, inexorable. His eyes are hard in a way Eugene doesn’t recognize, his voice steel. “It would be. Because they’ll kill you for it, and they’ll kill me for it, and you know it.”

“I got pretty damn good at staying alive,” Eugene says.

“Then it’d be a damn shame for you to survive all that just to get home and die because you didn’t want to live a normal life like the rest of us!” Sid’s breath is coming fast now, and he keeps shooting glances up towards the house.

“I don’t —”

“Sidney Phillips!” comes Mary’s voice, loud and joyful against the dull chatter.

They both freeze, Eugene’s lip curling involuntarily. “I don’t want to lead a normal life,” he says, deadly calm, and if he hadn’t decided this before he’s deciding now. “I can’t lead a normal life.”

“Stop.”

“I wanted to be with you,” Eugene continues, heedless of the tap of Mary’s heels over the pavement. “I’m a queer, Sid. I’m going to live a queer life.”

“Stop it.”

“And I love you,” Eugene says, his voice nearly catching on the truest thing he’s said since getting back.

“Eugene —”

Mary comes over the hill, stopping at the top of the steps, hands clasped expectantly. “Will you get back in here and dance with the woman who loves you?”

Sid looks stricken. He stares at Eugene, is silent for a beat too long before he says, not daring to turn around, “Yeah, I’m coming.” It sounds off-key in the still air, but Mary only laughs quietly and turns to leave with all the elegant giddiness of a proper bride-to-be. And Sid is still standing there, pale and speechless.

“I’m going home,” Eugene says at length. He doesn’t want to stand there any longer with Sid saying nothing. He feels like he’s facing a corpse.

“Eugene, wait,” Sid says as Eugene sets down his glass, the breath exploding from him like he’s been punched.

“I did,” Eugene says meanly.

“Me too,” says Sid, ignoring it. “I do too.” He takes a breath, opens his mouth, and closes it again. Eugene is tempted to leave anyway, to force Sid to face the same anguished inaction he’s been stewing in for the past week. And then Sid says, “I love you, too.”

Eugene lets out a long breath. He and Sid stand motionless, both unsure of what this means, why they’re doing this now. It all feels too little, too late.

“You have to…” says Eugene, gesturing toward the house, and it comes out breathless.

Sid’s brows knit, he bites his lip. “Tonight,” he says.

Eugene doesn’t realize his heart is pounding in his throat until he has to try to speak around it. “Tonight,” he agrees, and he watches Sid turn and climb the steps, something in him settling down into his toes.

* * *

He goes straight to the field, lays out on the grass and feels the cool spring air caress the tips of his fingers, his nose. He doesn’t know what they’re doing or what’s going to happen once Sid gets there, and the not knowing terrifies him.

At the same time, he feels like he hasn’t been able to take a whole breath since he last saw Sid, the anticipation and exhilaration warring in his lungs.

It’s late when he hears the rustle of dry grass underfoot, the rhythm of Sid’s gait undeniably familiar. He sits up and watches Sid’s figure approach, skin stained white against the shadowed forest. When he reaches Eugene, still sitting sprawled on the grass, he stands for a moment, face dark and unreadable in the dim light.

“Sid?” Eugene asks.

“Yeah,” Sid says, and drops to his knees. Eugene can hear the blood rushing in his ears; he hasn’t felt this way in so long. To think it’s been _years._ Sid leans forward and cups Eugene’s face like it’s only been a day.

They kiss, softly at first, and then with increasing desperation. Eugene drinks in Sid like this is the only chance they’ll ever get, pours in all his fear and frustration and nights spent missing him all the way across the world. They kiss open-mouthed and needy, and Eugene moans at the first taste of Sid’s tongue. Sid’s hands turn vice-like on Eugene’s jaw and Eugene grabs Sid’s shoulders to pull him with as he reclines. Sid shuffles in between Eugene’s legs and leans down as Eugene leans back, not once letting go of him.

He presses into Eugene, the buttons of his uniform biting into Eugene’s chest through the thin fabric of his shirt, and for the second time that night he’s bothered by Sid in uniform. He breaks the kiss to look down at the buttons while he undoes them, grimacing and willing his stomach to settle.

“God, never wear this again,” Eugene says as he pushes it off of Sid’s shoulders, watches him discard it on the grass to the side.

“What, nothing about a man in uniform for you?” Sid asks, playful and teasing. It surprises Eugene, whose throat is already feeling thick and dumb, worried and thrilled in equal measure. He’s shocked into a laugh as he moves on to the buttons of Sid’s dress shirt.

“No,” he says firmly. “Never.”

Sid stills for a moment, ducking his head to meet Eugene’s gaze. “Never?” he asks, and Eugene’s breath falters as he realizes what he said. Sid looks so earnest, and Eugene has to remind himself that he slept with that girl in Melbourne, that he has a fiancée probably wondering where he is right now. They are neither of them saints.

“Well,” he says, biting his lip uncertainly. “Not never.”

To his relief, Sid just laughs. “Thank God. I was about to start feelin’ _real_ bad.”

“You’re gettin’ married, Sid,” Eugene points out dryly. “You can still feel plenty bad.” His words are betrayed by the urgency with which he pulls Sid’s shirt out from its neat tuck, the way he shifts deliberately closer to him.

Luckily, Sid laughs at that, too, and reaches down to strip Eugene out of his suit jacket. Eugene lets him, then pushes Sid’s shirt down to his arms and leans up to place open-mouthed kisses across his collarbones, down his chest. Sid nudges him, chastising, when he grazes his teeth against his ribcage. Right, Eugene thinks — no marks. Still, even the thought of it sends a shot of heat straight through his belly.

“Remember wearing sweaters in April,” Eugene murmurs as he kisses along Sid’s navel, fingers tugging at the hem of his trousers. “The neck all pulled up, sweatin’ your ass off because I bit you so hard you cried?”

Sid’s breath hitches and Eugene smiles. “You never had any common sense,” he says. “Leavin’ ’em everywhere for everybody to see.”

“For me to see,” Eugene corrects. “I liked it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sid swears, and it’s such a novel thing that Eugene can only beam up at him for a moment. They meet in a kiss, and Eugene finally gets Sid’s trousers unbuttoned. He’s hard already, and the thing is over almost before it begins, both of them so gone on the high of finally being together again.

Eugene’s fingers are cold and dry in a way he can’t imagine is comfortable, but Sid gasps anyway when Eugene takes him in hand, and by the time Eugene thinks to bring him off with any sort of purpose he’s pressed his forehead against Eugene’s shoulder, heaving short, sharp breaths. Eugene lifts his free hand to thread it through Sid’s hair, murmuring praise like prayers. It’s in this way that Sid falls apart, shaking against Eugene as Eugene whispers, “I love you. I love you like this.”

It takes him a moment, with Eugene stroking his hair and him pressing small kisses to the column of Eugene’s throat, to come back to himself. When he does, his breathing is still ragged, but he shifts back to look Eugene in the eye, lucid. He presses Eugene into the ground with a hand on his chest, bending down to kiss him. Eugene loves the taste of him. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed it until Sid had kissed him again, smelling like himself, tasting like himself; it’s something Eugene hadn’t known he would recognize.

Sid breaks the kiss to bite hard at Eugene’s shoulder, the one he’d just pressed his face into.

“Hey,” Eugene protests, weak with pleasure. “What do you —”

 _“You_ don’t have a girl to come home to,” Sid says, grinning up at him. “’Sides, you like it.”

He has a point. Eugene sighs and lets his head fall against the grass, acquiescing. Sid bites at his shoulder again, rough enough that Eugene reflexively raises his arm as if to push him away. Instead, he cups the back of Sid’s neck, breathing out long and hard. He can feel Sid’s smile against his skin.

“Don’t be a tease,” Eugene grumbles, nosing into Sid’s hair, grip on his neck tightening.

“Me?” Sid asks, grinning again, and it’s good to see him so light. It makes Eugene smile, feeling tender and raw all of a sudden. It’s masked by a haze of feeling when Sid palms at him through his trousers. “Never.”

And that, embarrassingly, is enough. Eugene hisses, mortified as Sid’s smitten, devious smile makes him come in his pants. “Fuck.”

Sid doesn’t say anything, but the gentle fingers he trails over Eugene’s bare chest speak for themselves. He rolls off to the side and they lay there on the grass for a long moment. Eugene watches Sid breathe in his periphery, finally calming.

Once the giddy afterglow fades, he thinks, How did this happen? How, when Sid is still engaged, when Eugene is still so unspeakably furious with him, did they end up back here like teenagers? He thinks of the letters they wrote each other, the ones he wrote to Sid and the ones Sid wrote to him once he got home — separated by so many miles and still the only one Eugene really cared to think about. He knows now that his initial letters must have seemed painfully idealistic and obnoxious, but he likes to think that Sid appreciated them, if only because they were his.

“I missed you,” says Sid.

“Me too,” Eugene replies. It’s true. He reaches out and takes Sid’s hand, threading their fingers together without having to look. Another thought occurs to him. “You gave my book away.”

Sid hums, unsurprised by the shift. “Yeah. I don’t know why I did. Well. Ain’t no use holdin’ on to things out there. And besides, I didn’t think you’d ever find out. I thought you’d be here.”

“Would you have stayed with me?” Eugene asks. “If I was here when you came home?”

Sid is silent for long enough that Eugene starts to think he won’t answer, and then he squeezes Eugene’s hand. “I don’t know. There’s no way to know.”

It’s the same as not giving an answer and both of them know it, but it’s been a long night. Eugene’s willing to let it go.

* * *

Of course, nothing is ever so easily mended. Eugene makes it home, washes his pants in the bathroom sink. When he looks up at himself in the mirror, there’s a peculiar twist to his face, like he’s been caught halfway between joy and despair.

He sleeps for a few hours that night before waking to the room shaking violently around him, breathing in fours until it settles and he can lay back down under the covers. The mortar fire is never so bad as at three in the morning when he wakes up screaming for dead men to find cover, clawing at the bedsheets-turned-mud that stand in the way of him and a bleeding Hamm.

He can’t tell if he likes that his parents’ footsteps stop at his doorway, too frightened or too reluctant to move beyond the threshold into this dark nest of night terrors. Eugene sees them wherever he looks, in his floorboards and nightstand and the dress blues peeking out of his closet. He goes to sleep anxious and wakes up harrowed. He is never clean. He doesn’t think his mother would be able to handle it, if she knew.

When he wakes the next morning, there’s an invitation to dinner with Sid and his parents sitting on the breakfast table for him. It’s a welcome long overdue, but Eugene supposes he’s been in such a thunderous mood lately that he wouldn’t have gone even if Sid had invited him earlier. Now, however, he accepts without a second thought.

The morning feels easier, knowing that Sid is still there with him. Knowing that Sid is still his. He finishes breakfast and sits for a while with his coffee, the house empty of anyone but him. He thinks quietly, joyfully: Sidney Phillips loves me.

He goes upstairs to get dressed and remembers only as he tugs off his nightshirt about the impression of Sid’s teeth fresh on his skin. In a rush, he grabs his clothes and braves the empty hallway, shirtless, to stand before the bathroom mirror. Sid’s mouth is a purplish blotch on the ball of his shoulder, low enough to surely be covered by Eugene’s sleeve but starkly visible all the same. Eugene bites his lip to fend off a smile.

It’s almost excruciating to get through the day until dinner. It’s not that Eugene necessarily wants to make small talk with Sid’s folks, but knowing what’s hidden just beneath his thin cotton, incriminating and intoxicating at once, and not having anyone else to know it with makes him antsy. He goes for a run, passes through the field and ignores a rising blush, goes into town and browses the shelves of the bookstore just to pass the time.

He heads straight for the back, bypassing fiction in favor of the textbooks, crouching down to examine the stems. He finds he has little patience for fiction anymore, just as he has little patience for the finer details of applying for college and the crashing cymbals of John Philip Sousa sounding for the hundredth time from the drugstore radio. It all seems to have been made by a person who thinks of minutiae as important — someone who will never know what he knows.

He ignores the drugstore with its incessant military march, walking straight home with a new book in hand. He sits beneath the oak and reads, watching the birds flit to and fro as they return gradually from their winter migration. Spring opens up around him that day. He half expects to see a fawn in the yard.

His parents are home when dinner finally rolls around, and the three of them pile together into the car and head for the Phillipses’. Sid doesn’t live too far away, but the country is a meandering force and the drive gives Eugene enough time to start feeling high-strung. The thought of seeing Sid again is molton-hot down his spine, but the idea that somehow the two of them together would be enough to give them away is sobering. For all his words the night before, Eugene really doesn’t know what he would do if his family found out, and Sid’s right; they would both be subject to mob justice before any form of law intervened.

Catching sight of Sid’s house from the end of his driveway, however, is enough to calm Eugene’s nerves. He’s been to this house a thousand times. Sid’s parents know him, know how he is, and he’s gotten away with much, much worse under their roof than a simple family dinner.

Sid comes out to meet them as they step out of the car, and Eugene’s heart does a silly, embarrassing leap when he claps him on the shoulder, right over his mark. “It’s good to see y’all,” he says, eyes twinkling, and Eugene can only muster a nod.

In true Mobile fashion, dinner won’t be ready for another couple of hours, so Sid and his father sit with the Sledges and Mary Frank insists on helping out in the kitchen. Naturally, of course, conversation turns to Sid’s impending marriage.

“April, yeah,” he’s saying, looking at Edward until he looks at Eugene, boyishly mischievous. “She wanted a spring wedding.”

Eugene finds himself returning the smile, albeit somewhat unwillingly. It makes him uncomfortable, sitting in Sid’s drawing room talking about his future wife, watching him smile like they’re not what they are. It feels performative and private all at once, and Eugene comes to a realization that should’ve landed far, far earlier — Sid’s actually going to marry her. It makes him itch, reaching for his pipe and standing before he realizes what he’s doing. He barely bites out an “excuse me” before he’s dashing out into the yard.

Sid finds him on the porch a moment later, smoking anxiously. Eugene stares out at the Phillipses’ manicured hedges as the familiar weight of his friend leans against the railing next to him. They’re quiet for a drawn-out breath, and then Sid fishes a cigarette from his carton and lights it.

“It bothers you,” Sid says.

Eugene doesn’t laugh, but he comes close. “Yeah.”

“You’ll get married, too, someday,” Sid presses, turning to look at him straight on. Eugene doesn’t meet his eyes, but he can hear the desperate confidence in his voice. Like this is all supposed to make sense, if only Eugene could fall into place.

“No, Sid, I won’t,” Eugene says, denying him even that. It’s not cruel, he tells himself. It’s self-preservation. “I told you I won’t. I can’t.”

“You don’t know —”

“Yes, I do,” Eugene snaps, finally turning to face him. They’re unbearably close, Sid’s cigarette hanging from his fingers, slowly burning out. Eugene’s pipe feels cold to the touch. He reaches out and rests a hand on Sid’s shoulder, placating. “I’m never gonna get married, Sid. And I sure as hell ain’t gonna follow you and your new wife around lookin’ for scraps.”

Sid blinks. “Well what do you mean by that, Eugene? What did you think was gonna happen?”

“I don’t know,” Eugene says, and it’s the truth. He hadn’t thought about it. Maybe it was his own form of denial, or maybe he’d genuinely believed everything would work itself out on its own, but he hadn’t given their future a damn bit of thought past their argument the night before. Now he feels like a fool for it. “I didn’t think.”

Sid looks down at Eugene’s hand still resting on his shoulder and lets out a soft sigh. “Well I am. I’m gettin’ married. Nobody can live like this forever. And anyway, I haven’t changed my mind. I might love you, but it’s too dangerous to be livin’ the way you want.”

Eugene takes his hand off. He clasps his fingers in front of himself, his pipe like stone. He nods. “And I can’t live like that, Sid.”

And Sid looks so guilty, so ashamed. He looks like a man who’d foreseen the inevitable and done the wrong thing just because he hoped it would turn out differently. “I know,” he says. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

Eugene can only keep nodding, feeling like a puppet. He looks down at his shoes, then into the house, then back up to Sid. Sid’s already looking back. He takes Eugene’s arm, gentle and apologetic, and leans in to kiss him. It’s quick and chaste, the gaping windows and half-open door making them furtive, but Eugene leans into Sid even so. When they break apart, he feels a pressure building at the back of his throat, choking.

“Go back inside,” he manages. “I’ll be right there.”

* * *

They see each other mostly in passing. At family events, at town festivals. Passing each other in restaurants or in stores or on the street, Eugene feeling a sense of lost connection each time Sid’s eyes catch on him briefly and then slide right on by. Frankly, it’s horrible.

Eugene misses him. He missed him on Okinawa, in Peking, felt Sid’s absence like the ache of a long-lost limb. Missing him here at home, seeing him weekly and saying nothing, is worse. Every time he catches sight of Sid, or Sid-and-Mary, it’s like a wrench around his heart, pulling everything tighter and tighter. He knows that at some point he will burst.

It happens in mid-March, when Sid arrives at his door looking preemptively sorry. Eugene knows this won’t be good. Sid asks him to be his best man, and Eugene can only stare.

“You don’t have one already?” he asks dumbly, the only thing he can think to say.

“Well, the plan was always for it to be you,” Sid admits, going pink. “It’s just been so… y’know, with everything goin’ on.”

And Eugene laughs in his face. This time it is cruel, if the way Sid’s expression crumples is any indication, but he can’t help it. Eugene feels manic, the laughter bubbling out of his chest until it curdles into deep, racking sobs. Sid stands there for a moment, utterly unsure of what to do, before tentatively wrapping his arms around Eugene.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

Eugene doesn’t really let himself weep so much as it rips bodily out of him, crashing like a wave. He couldn’t stop it if he were the strongest man on earth, and God knows he’s not even close to that. Sid holds him until his shaking has calmed to a quiver, rubbing circles into his back. Eugene can feel his breath hot against his face.

Against his better judgement, he says yes.

* * *

The next few weeks are one long march to the scaffold. There’s a sense of impending doom as the wedding approaches, even if everything was over long before Sid asked him to get involved. Some part of him still holds out naive hope that Sid will change his mind.

Sid doesn’t make him do much, which is a small mercy but a kind one nonetheless. Eugene is grateful for it, even if it means they don’t see as much of each other as they used to. There are little things, though. Luncheons, shopping trips. Sid asks him to come to dinner with him and Mary and the maid of honor.

It’s a week before the wedding, and Eugene is miserable, but of course he says yes. Where he’s otherwise become so firm and self-determined since he got home, he finds that saying no to Sidney Phillips is as difficult as ever.

They meet at a new, upscale restaurant in downtown Mobile; four fools, Eugene thinks, dressed up like wise men. Mary looks stunning as always, and her maid of honor is a pretty girl named Jean that Eugene is fairly sure he remembers from school. Sid is in a suit, and Eugene stops himself from looking at him at all.

The funny thing is, they almost make it through unscathed. The funny thing is that they’ve had months to screw this up, and here they are, a week out from the future, so close, and everything falling down around them. The funny thing is that as Eugene is packing his bag, throwing clothes haphazardly into his duffle in the sort of frenzied, rushed way he had hoped he could leave behind with the war, he thinks he might’ve done it on purpose.

When Eugene Sledge fails, he fails spectacularly, and on his own terms.

What’s nice is that Jean doesn’t try to flirt with him, at least, and Mary doesn’t try to set them up. Maybe Sid’s warned her about him, maybe she just has enough sense to know that the hunched set of his shoulders means he’d rather not be there at all. In any case, at least Jean has no part in it, and it happens on its own.

They’re finished eating, talking idly, small dessert plates strewn about, chocolate-stained. It’s fine, really, as long as Eugene doesn’t think too hard about it. Mary is charming and smart, a good conversationalist, and Sid’s smile is bright when he looks at her. In truth, Eugene can’t take it.

He excuses himself, hand already dipping into his pocket for his pipe, and steps out of the patio where they’re sitting, rounding the corner of the restaurant to find himself in a secluded alley. The only other thing is a dumpster, and he feels calmer already, his breathing even as he packs his pipe.

He smokes in silence for a while before the sound of footsteps catches up to him and Sid rounds the corner. Eugene knows immediately that he’s troubled, and as he comes closer, the low furrow of his eyebrows confirms it.

“You all right?” Sid asks.

Eugene is too tired and upset to spare him his grief. “What do you think?”

Sid just nods at that, eyeing Eugene leaned against the wall, expensive suit mashed against the dirty, rugged brick. Eugene thinks of the alley in China, though he knows this one isn’t nearly so promising.

“One more week,” Sid says, and while he probably means for it to sound excited, it really just comes out like a plodding reassurance. _Only one more week,_ he says in Eugene’s mind, _and then we’ll be done with the whole rotten business._

“Not really,” says Eugene.

“One more week of _this,_ anyway,” Sid says, gesturing vaguely between them and the patio around the corner. “And then you can be done with it.”

Eugene pauses, oddly offended. “You think I’d just leave? You get married and I’d just… vanish?”

Sid swallows. “It’s what you want, isn’t it? Move to California?”

Eugene chuckles, though it’s lacking mirth. “Only with you. You really think I want to go to California?” The thought is absurd. He doesn’t know anything or anyone out west, and the only memories he has of it are of troop ships and long, military train rides. He can hardly imagine. “Sid, I just wanted to go to where I could be with you.”

Sid goes suddenly quiet, gaze flickering between Eugene and the dull pavement, looking bewildered and like something else Eugene can’t quite place. His cigarette burns down in his fingers, unsmoked, like all those nights ago on his porch. Eugene feels some tug of continuity, and lowers his pipe. He reaches out, hesitating, and takes Sid’s hand. Sid inhales sharply, swaying forward ever-so-slightly, and that’s all the affirmation Eugene needs to pull him close and kiss him.

“Gene,” Sid gasps when he pulls away, hand clutching Eugene’s like a lifeline. “Gene, I’m afraid I’ll regret this.”

Eugene feels a stab in his chest, shocking, burning, like hurt and hope. “I’m not,” he says, voice thick with conviction. “I’ve never regretted you, not once in my life.”

Sid meets Eugene’s eyes, expression newborn and bare. “Where would we go?”

“Anywhere,” Eugene says, kissing him. “Wherever you want. New Orleans. Austin. Florida.”

“New Orleans?” Sid asks.

Eugene smiles. “I know a guy.”

“Okay.” Sid draws back to rest their foreheads together, faces blurry this close together. “Okay, New Orleans. Let’s go.”

And it’s so unexpected, so much against what Eugene believes to be true, what he believes can happen, that his heart feels full up. He can hardly breathe, huffing disparate laughter against Sid’s slack mouth. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Eugene repeats, convincing himself that this is real. “Okay.” His cheer is dampened briefly when he thinks of it and says, “Are you gonna tell Mary?”

Sid tenses up in his arms, and Sledge, without thinking, squeezes his hand with one of his own and cups his face with the other. Sid opens his mouth to reply when there’s a soft, wavering voice from behind them.

“Tell me what?” asks Mary Houston, but when Sid and Eugene break apart, guilty, to look at her, it’s obvious that she knows well enough. She stands, beautiful in her springtime dress, arms hanging limp by her sides. She looks like she might start crying.

Eugene doesn’t know what to say. From the morose silence next to him, he guesses Sid doesn’t either. Eugene can feel the hair raise on the back of his neck — he worries she might scream.

She doesn’t. Mary balls her hands into fists, eyes wet, and shakes them once, uselessly, like she’s beating the air. Then she folds her arms in front of herself and doesn’t cry. She raises her chin and says, “Get out of here.”

Eugene is ready to leave, turn and flee and drag Sid with him, but Sid says, “Mary —” like a plea. Eugene’s afraid of how this will end.

“Get out of here,” she repeats, pointing this time back towards the car. “I’ll walk. Just go.”

Eugene knows he probably can’t help the situation, but Sid looks struck dumb. “Mary,” he tries, “please —”

“Don’t you say a word to me, Eugene Sledge,” she snaps. “I don’t fucking care.” It feels wrong, coming from her pretty mouth, but she’s angry and so, so sad. And she is full of perfect grace. “I won’t tell if you just get the _hell_ out of this town.”

“Yeah,” Eugene says, hands up like he’s calming a wild animal, like she could lash out at any moment. “Okay.” _Thank you_ doesn’t feel proper, so instead Eugene takes Sid by the elbow and leads him quickly past Mary, having to stop himself from running for the car.

So what makes him chuckle darkly as he’s taking one last glance around a bedroom he’ll probably never see again is that he thinks he did it on purpose. He thinks he wanted her to see. In fact, he _needed_ her to see, to know — _Sidney Phillips is mine._

* * *

The first thing they do in New Orleans is find a hotel. The second is find an apartment. The third is find jobs.

They have only the money they could scrounge up as they were leaving, panicked and afraid that Mary would go back on her word, and Eugene is too proud to call home and ask for any more. They get a tiny, one-bedroom apartment under the pretense that Sid will sleep on the pull-out couch, and pay the first month’s rent with half their savings.

The first night they spend there, they lay on the bed parallel to each other, the thin mattress bare of even a coverlet, and don’t touch except for their hands. They stare up at the ceiling for hours, neither of them saying a word, fingers intertwined. Eugene feels scared, then. For the first time since Sid said yes, he thinks, What if this doesn’t work? What if we have to go home and live like that again? What if I’ll never be able to get over this once it’s done?

They fall asleep holding hands and wake up curled in toward each other, fingers still clasped. Eugene decides to take it as a sign.

Sid gets a job at the docks and announces to Eugene that he’s going to become a doctor, looking into the many colleges around town. Eugene says, “All right,” and thinks about going to college, too.

What had seemed so monumental a feat back home feels weightless here, the idea of getting a job and going to school. He suspects the ease won’t last, but he’ll take advantage of it while it does. He becomes a bookkeeper for an oil company and applies for college, thinking of the battered biology textbook thrown into his duffel. He’s taken to waking up early to watch the pigeons flutter about the street below, and he remembers watching spring come in with the birds beneath the oak tree.

It feels new and bursting with possibility, this place that he and Sid could maybe make their home. But after a week, he adjusts to his new surroundings and the nightmares come back.

It’s humid, he and Sid sweaty and spent, sheets tangled around their ankles as Gene rests his head on Sid’s chest and listens to his steady heartbeat.

“Regret this yet?” he asks, tone light.

Sid laughs, carding his fingers absentmindedly through Eugene’s hair. “Not quite yet. Give it time.”

Eugene stays quiet instead of saying, _I plan on it._ He thinks he’d be content to live like this forever.

He falls asleep listening to Sid hum a familiar sort of jazz tune, hymnal in the quiet creaking of their old apartment, and wakes up scratching at thin air. Sid is awake, Eugene notices when he’s calmed, looking concerned but not afraid. Looking like he can feel what Eugene’s feeling, the tight contraction of his lungs.

Eugene puts his head in his hands, blowing out an angry breath. What he would give to just be done with all of it, to get one good night’s sleep. It had been a far reach, but he’d hoped the change in scenery might help his nerves. At the very least, he’d hoped he wouldn’t wake Sid up with his nightmares like every damaged soldier’s wife. It feels disingenuous to even think of him in that role.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers after a few minutes of stillness, Sid’s hand a careful pressure on his back.

“It’s okay,” Sid says sincerely. “You’re here now, it’s okay.”

So begins their nightly routine. Eugene feels badly for it, upset with himself for the dark circles he can see forming underneath Sid’s eyes as the days pass, but every time he tries to apologize, Sid shushes him with a kiss. It makes him smile, but it doesn’t make him feel less guilty.

They go to work and school, they come home and cook or go out to eat, they kiss, they go to bed and wake up and go to bed again. Eugene thinks it would be monotonous if it were with anyone but Sid.

One warm evening, Eugene gets home from a night class to find Sid in the kitchen, attempting a recipe from their thrifted cookbook that Eugene’s fairly sure he’s ever even heard of before. He’s bouncing on his toes, stirring a pot on the stove, and it takes Eugene a second to realize that there’s music drifting from an old radio on the counter. Their apartment is bare enough that Eugene had thought they didn’t own one.

“What’s this?” he asks, and Sid looks up at him with a grin.

He raises his eyebrows, nodding along with Sinatra’s smooth coo. “Thought we were missin’ a homey touch.”

Eugene chuckles, setting his bag on the floor next to the door and stepping into the kitchen to kiss Sid, both of them smiling too hard for it to really work.

“Hey,” says Sid, resting his stirring spoon against the rim of the pot and placing one hand on Eugene’s waist.

Eugene takes the other easily, not minding being led if it’s Sid, buoyant and smiling, that does the leading. _When I kissed you, darling,_ sighs the radio, curling around Eugene’s head and leaving him dizzy as they turn in a restrained waltz around the kitchen.

He looks up into Sid’s eyes, and they twinkle back at him. Eugene runs his other hand up to rest on Sid’s shoulder and leans in to kiss him, still swaying to the music. Sid grips his waist and pulls him close. When they break apart, Eugene wraps his arms around Sid’s shoulders and pulls him into an embrace, feeling his body pliant and comfortable against Eugene’s.

_It was the promise, darling, of the things that fate had willed for me._

**Author's Note:**

> please come yell at me about sidgene on [tumblr](https://townhulls.tumblr.com/)! i love them so much and there is next to no content for them ANYWHERE :(


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